The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 2

by Charles Dean

  When Minx reached the six drakes, Fuzzy Wuzzy leaped up and pounced at the first one as if he were just a big fluffy dog greeting an absent master. The second impact was made though, the other five dragons spread their wings, taking to the air as they spit streams of fire at the bear. Minx, dodging the fire and going for the kill at the same time, jumped off the bear and landed daggers first into the pinned drake’s skull as her trusty transportation device roared in pain under the scorching blaze of the flying snakes’ attacks.

  Yep, called it, Darwin grumbled as he got closer to the dead Drake. “Can you get them with the ice chains? Or one of your snowballs?” He shouted at Kass, whom he knew wouldn’t be too far behind him.

  “Of course I’m trying that!” She snapped back. “Just go do your Darwin thingy!”

  When he finally reached Fuzzy Wuzzy, who hadn’t moved as the drake’s breath attacks ignited him, he tried to push the bear out of the way of the next attack. The only problem was, the bear was too heavy, and the first fiery assault had left him not only losing health rapidly but also stunned stiff. “Minx? Where are you?” He looked around frantically until he noticed her hugging Fuzzy Wuzzy’s head. “Oh, there you are. Don’t worry. He’s not dead yet,” he said, half for her and half for himself.

  What do I . . . Oh! Darwin was about to panic, unsure of how to save his bear, when he remembered that in most video games the best way to kill a dragon was to wear dragon armor. One look at the drake Fuzzy Wuzzy had managed to pin confirmed his theory: not a single one of its scales had been burnt even though the fire had surely hit them. “The wings! Minx, help me with the wings!” he said, yanking one of the dead Drake’s giant wings over Fuzzy Wuzzy like he was spreading a tarp over his stuff to stop the rain from soaking his it--except he was trying to stop the fire from barbecuing his bear.

  It only took a few seconds for him to confirm that his idea worked, and judging from the condition of Fuzzy Wuzzy, it would have only taken a few blasts for the Drakes to have finished the job. In several large patches, the animal’s fur had been singed off and the flesh underneath had been roasted until it was almost crispy. Is it wrong that you smell delicious, Fuzzy Wuzzy? Darwin cursed as the aroma of cooked bear meat reached his nose. Dangit, bear, I’m trying to fight, and you smell like a well-seasoned steak.

  “Its okay, Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuzzy! I’m not leaving! I’m here here!” Minx hadn’t stopped hugging the bear’s head since she finished covering herself and the bear with the other wing.

  Welp, that’s two of us down, and only one enemy to show for it. He looked back at Kass, standing behind Kitchens, who had drawn his sword in front of him as if he were going to attack any incoming fire with his blade. He was concentrating on something intently. “How much longer till you get these beasts grounded?” he asked, looking at the flying circle of Drakes that were still fruitlessly trying to kill Darwin, Fuzzy Wuzzy and Minx with fire as the three of them sat under the giant corpse's wings.

  “Well, ummm . . . We got a problem,” Kass started slowly. “You know how in a lot of games dragons have a magic-resistant quality?”

  Darwin’s eyes opened slowly in horror as he realized what she was saying. “No, no you’re kidding me. They wouldn’t do that. Too many people play mage characters. They wouldn’t do that,” Darwin tried to reason, but the lack of falling Drakes regardless of Kass’s efforts was evidence enough.

  “Hmmm,” Darwin thought for a minute, looking at the Drakes then looking at Kass and Kitchens . . . and the entrance behind them. What am I doing, assuming this is the end? This isn’t the end. This is a video game. GM’s might frown upon playing like this, but this type of strategy has never been a bannable offense, he smiled, hope returning as he eyed the key to his battle plan. “Kass, Kitchens, when you get a chance, come under the wing with Minx and me,” he started relaying orders. Then, turning to Minx, he looked at the shell-shocked bear hugger. “Minx, Fuzzy Wuzzy is going to be fine, but I need you to pull yourself together so we can keep him alive. Can you do that? Can I count on you?”

  “Yes,” she said, hesitantly releasing her hold on the bear’s neck.

  “Good. I need you to do your best to hold those wings shut together over Kitchens and I while we drag the corpse back through that entrance,” Darwin patted her on the back. “I’m counting on you to keep us safe.”

  When Kass and Kitchens reached him, he nudged Fuzzy Wuzzy, “Come on, Fuzzy Wuzzy. Enough down time. Let’s get out of here.”

  Then the four of them, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Kass, Kitchens and Darwin, did their best to slowly drag the corpse across the dungeon floor with Minx doing her best to make sure everyone didn’t end up charred. They couldn’t move as quickly as Darwin would have hoped, and the entire time they were dragging the corpse, the flames never stopped, but little by little they made it to the entrance of the cave. “Hold up!” Darwin said, his hands still holding up the Drake as they reached the finish line. “When we go through this door, pull the body to the right. This is going to break LOS and force two options on the Drakes. Either we’re super unlucky, and they’re going to drop aggro and return to their spots, or we’re lucky and they’re going to come darting through that giant entrance, giving us a short window of time in which they’re guaranteed to be on the ground.”

  “LOS? Aggro?” Kitchens asked, likely never having heard the words before. They weren’t common terms outside of video games, so it was entirely understandable for him not to understand them.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. LOS is line of sight. Most enemies have to be able to see you to cast their spells on you or attack you,” Darwin explained. “Aggro is like aggression? Aggressiveness? It’s basically how mad a mob or monster is at you. If an enemy NPC is aggroed, he’ll be trying to attack you. In some games you can break aggro, or get an enemy to stop trying to kill you, by going too far or switching zones. I’m not sure how Tiqpa works, but we’re basically betting on that not being the case here.”

  “Ah, I see. Thank you,” Kitchens nodded thoughtfully.

  “So, we go around the corner, and you hit them with your blade one at a time as they try to get through?” Kass spelled out the plan with a smile on her face, “Like whack-a-mole?”

  “Yep, ready?” Darwin asked, getting nods from everyone, even the bear.

  “Alright, we got this!” he exclaimed, helping his three friends pull the dragon out of the cave.

  For several grains of sand through the hourglass, nothing happened. The fire had stopped, sure enough, but nothing happened. All four of them waited, staring at the entrance, breath held silently, but nothing happened. Then, loud enough to startle a deaf man, one of the Drakes crashed right through the obsidian hole head first. Darwin almost missed it, but he and Kitchens both managed to sink their blades right into the Drake’s skull as it squirmed to push through.

  “Let me finish it off,” Darwin said to Kitchens who was readying the final blow. “I need to make sure he doesn’t stiffen up so the entrance stays clear.”

  “Understood,” Kitchens sheathed his sword and backed up.

  As soon as Darwin’s blade sank in and finished off the Drake, he used his ability to create undead followers. He watched as the Drake’s once black eyes shone red, and the momentarily dead monster healed instantly, finished clawing his way through the entrance, turned, and waited for Darwin’s command.

  “That one is mine! I called shotgun on the dragon stuff! You all heard me!” Kass shouted gleefully as the big Drake stood poised with closed wings in front of Darwin.

  “Fine, fine,” Darwin said, waving her over quickly. “Go take it for a spin. Just be ready to catch any of them if we don’t get the kill blow here.”

  And, within seconds of saying that, another Drake rammed into the wall. “It’s working! Maim it! I got the death blow!” Darwin shouted out his commands as the dragon struggled to get through the hole.

  “Stabby stabby for Fuzzy Wuzzy!” Minx shouted as she sank her daggers into its thick, scaly hide. “No more burny burny
for you!”

  Darwin finished off that one too--and then the next and the next and the next, all in the exact same fashion. When he finished off the last one, and all five had made it through the hole with red eyes, he felt a huge load off his chest.

  “We did it,” he said, slumping into the wall. “We did it, and no one died.”

  Minx resumed her bear head hug. “We got the bad bad guys for you. No one will ever hurt you again big beary weary, or I’ll stabby stab stab them!” Fuzzy Wuzzy nuzzled his head into the hug and let out a low growl. “That’s right, Fuzzy Wuzzy. They were meanies.”

  “I didn’t doubt you for a moment,” Kitchens said, his eyes moving from one Drake to another.

  “That makes one of us,” Darwin admitted, remembering the panic when he thought he was about to lose Fuzzy Wuzzy and likely Minx right after. “I actually wasn’t even sure we’d be able to pull it off.”

  “The path to victory in an uneven battle lies in leveraging every tiny detail until the force yielded from those seemingly insignificant facts is great enough to subdue your foe. You already understood this, that is why I didn’t doubt you would win. But it is important that you not only understand it, but know it.” Kitchens stopped studying the Drakes and turned to Darwin. “The one on the right end--if you let me have that one, I won’t tell Kass about the dirty thoughts you had earlier.”

  Darwin frowned. “They weren’t dirty thoughts, I was just . . . Nevermind. Forget it, you can have that one.” He knew there was no point in arguing because if the discussion lasted long enough Kass would eventually overhear.

  “So what are we going to do about the rest of the dungeon?” Kass said, swooping down beside Darwin as Kitchens went over to acquaint himself with the rewards of his blackmail.

  “You mean how are we going to clear it?” Darwin glanced inside the cave and then back at the set of five mounts.

  “Yeah, got any ideas? I mean, that last fight was pretty easy once we got them through the door, but the next skirmishes are going to probably be pretty tough.” Kass’s words were of the warning kind, but it was hard to take them seriously when her face was still stuck in a permanent smile from getting a dragon.

  Who would have thought she would be this happy with getting a dragon. She never mentioned this before at all. One minute she’s barely keeping up at all, the next minute she’s tearing through the skies like a bat out of hell, he thought still processing the near death combat experience when an idea hit him for how to clear out the rest of the dungeon. A wicked twisted smile, the kind that showed up on every cartoon villain, found its way creeping across Darwin’s face as he thought for a moment. “Actually, I have an idea on how to finish off our dungeon problem.”

  “What’s the idea?” Kass asked then shuddered. “Darwin, what’s with that smile? I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I don’t like that look,” Kass said, backing up on her mount. “You know that creepy smile really doesn’t go well with the horns . . .”

  “Kass, how fast do you think you can go on that thing?” Darwin asked, a chuckle escaping his grin.

  Kass:

  Darwin’s constant leering was starting to send shivers up Kass’s spine. Whatever his plan was, she was almost certain she didn’t want to be a part of it. “Darwin, no, I’m not answering that,” she instinctively retorted.

  “All I’m asking,” Darwin did his best to straighten up his face, but his laughter was reinforcing the creepy smile despite his best efforts, “is whether or not you could outrun the other Drakes if need be? I mean, you do seem to like flying that guy, right?”

  Wait, why would I have to . . . “No! I’m not going to do that, Darwin!” Kass stamped her foot as she realized what Darwin was going to ask. If he wants someone to play bait and go gather up all the Drakes, then he can go do it himself! she thought defiantly. There is no way in Hades that he is ever going to get away with making me the lure in this fishing game!

  “Well, I guess I’ll just have to take that Drake back then . . .” Darwin raised his hand and motioned as if he was calling a dog home. The big Blue-Drake Kass had been riding on just a moment ago started to move towards Darwin before Kass jumped between the two.

  “I’ll do it!” Kass panicked, her body not big enough to block the drake’s return if Darwin seriously called it. “Don’t think like that. There is no reason for you to take Toothifer away.”

  “You named him already? And Toothifer at that?”

  “Well, it was either that, Scale-eosis, or Scale-ator,” she said, remembering the hard decision she had faced, “but the first sounded like a disease and the second ended up making me think of chicken fingers.”

  “Chicken fingers? Really?” Darwin sighed in exasperation.

  “Well, you know that the closest living relative to a T-Rex is a chicken, right? So when I thought of Scale-ator, I thought of chickens, and then I remembered that I haven’t had chicken fingers in a while. I couldn’t stop thinking of chicken fingers. So Scale-ator makes me think of chicken fingers.” Kass smiled in satisfaction with her logic. Not everyone knew that the chicken was the closest living ancestor to the T-Rex, or so her news feed said one morning.

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Minx.” Darwin scrunched his eyebrows and pinched the top of his nose.

  Spending too much time with Minx! Psh, you’ve just been spending too much time with Kitchens, Kass wanted to say, but decided that given he had just gotten her a giant, blue dragon, something she had secretly dreamed about since she had first heard of a VRMMO, it might be okay to let his comment slide without a rebuttal. “Well, whatever, Toothifer just seemed to fit, so I’m going with it.”

  “Fair enough, but I still need you and Toothifer to do me a favor. We have an entire dungeon full of enemies,” Darwin pointed to the inside of the dungeon where several Drakes were still visible. “It will take a long time to clear out if we try to fight them fairly. I think our best bet is to get you and Kitchens to take your new mounts and go round up our prey. If you keep a safe distance and aggro them with your rides’ fireballs, you should be able to pull them all without getting in harm's way.”

  “So you want me to not fight, but run away like a coward, right?” Kass clarified, not entirely sure how she felt about her role in the plan, but getting past the Drakes would necessarily be a team effort, and she would have to play a part if it were going to succeed. Actually, this is the first time we’ve done a strategy like this in a dungeon, she thought, remembering how previously it had just been the usual hack and slash grind all the way through. “No fighting, just running?”

  “Sure. After all, Scale-ator is a relative of the chicken, right? Should be real easy for him to summon up his ancestral talents and run away from a fight,” Darwin laughed as he put a hand on the blue Drake’s wing.

  “His name is Toothifer!” Kass insisted, resisting the urge to stomp on the ground. “Not Scale-ator!”

  “Sure, sure. Are you and Toothifer up to the challenge?”

  “Yeah, no problem. Just, how come it’s Kitchens and not Minx?”

  “Because, if we take out style and defense from the Damage stat equation, Minx does more Damage than Kitchens by a long shot,” Darwin said, walking around Toothifer as if he were a piece of meat at the supermarket. “She’s sloppy, but she hits like the main character in an anime after ten episodes of shouting at the screen. Also, I don’t want to tell her she has to go galloping in yelling Leroy Jenkins after the last incident with Fuzzy Wuzzy. Girl looked like she was going to cry when they started killing the poor guy.”

  “Yeah, actually, quick question: if Fuzzy Wuzzy dies . . . Can you resurrect him again?” Kass asked as she stared at Minx, who was playing with the giant bear as if he were a tiny puppy.

  “No, I don’t think I can,” Darwin shrugged.

  “Well, I think we need to talk to Kitchens about getting his daughter a cat or a dog then,” Kass thought, thinking about the horrifying ramifications if the girl lost her new pet mid-game
. It’s really not a matter of ‘if’ so much as ‘when,’ Kass thought, thinking about how tough things were getting and how big of a target the black bear was.

  “Maybe,” Darwin nodded in agreement, “but for the moment, let’s stay focused on the dungeon. We don’t have long until Valerie’s crew of bird-men finish their job. I’d like to have the dungeon cleared before they even show up if we can.”

  “You’re not worried about how difficult the boss will be with just the four of us?”

  “Who said it would only be four of us?” Darwin grinned and eyed the five red-eyed Drakes.

  “You know that is a cheat skill, right? Why would they even add a skill like that without a clear limit,” Kass complained. It wasn’t right that she only got a few cool ice spells, and he got the ability to raise giant, undead, zombie armies.

  “Actually, there is a limit. It said I can only control the number up to the maximum number of NPCs I can command,” Darwin put a finger to his chin. “But . . .”

  “But faction leaders don’t have clear-cut NPC command limitations . . .” Kass understood what he was trying to say.

  “Yeah, I’m as lost as you, but it does mean we won’t have to go into that final fight alone.” Darwin turned from the Drake to face Kass. “All you have to do is run.”

  It wasn’t so much the idea, demanding that she flee, but the way he said it that cemented her feet to the ground and sent an icy finger running up along the side of her spine.

  They had been having so much fun that she had forgotten all about his horns or noticed that his eyes weren’t just red any more--they were pulsing and glowing with a strange light. Have they always looked like that? her own gaze fixated on his like a deer struck stiff by the headlights of a car. Has he always looked like that? She involuntarily shivered a bit, then shook her head to clear it of the thoughts. This is Darwin. There is nothing off about him. “Yeah, that plan does sound easy enough. Well, let me hop on Toothifer, and then I’m ready.”